Frequently asked questions
The things people ask before they start.
- Is ByteStep free?
- Yes. Every lesson is free to use and there is no account to create. Open one and start.
- Who is it for?
- Computer science students who have the lectures and the textbook but not the intuition. It also works for self-taught developers filling gaps and for interview preparation.
- How is this different from a video or a tutorial article?
- A video plays at its own pace and an article stands still. A ByteStep lesson is a running model: you scrub it a step at a time, step backwards, change the input and watch the whole thing re-run with your numbers.
- Will this match my course?
- Lessons are named after the standard module names and anchored to the canonical textbooks most courses derive from: CLRS for algorithms, Silberschatz and Tanenbaum for operating systems, Patterson and Hennessy for architecture. Each lesson shows the standard notation beside the animation at least once.
- Do I need to install anything?
- No. It runs in the browser, works on a phone, and keeps your place without an account.
- Can I use ByteStep lessons in my own teaching?
- Yes. Show them in a classroom, lab or tutorial, with attribution and a link. What you may not do is repackage them to earn money, such as publishing recordings on a monetised channel or including them in a paid course. The terms of use spell out the detail.
- Does ByteStep work offline?
- Once a lesson has loaded it keeps running without a connection, because the simulation is computed in your browser rather than fetched from a server.
Still stuck on something? The terms of use cover what you may do with the lessons, and privacy covers what is stored.